SAN FRANCISCO, CA; 17th October 2024: Surge, a Bitcoin protocol layer designed to improve the network’s scalability and functionality, has secured $1.8 million in pre-seed funding to drive the development of its MetaLayer to unlock Bitcoin’s full potential as a global currency and a base layer for innovation.
The funding round attracted support from forward-thinking VC firms, including Autonomy, Gerstenbrot Capital, Double Peak Group, Sats Ventures, Vamient Capital, and Samara AG. Notable angel investors also participated, including Coingecko’s co-founders, Bobby Ong and TM Lee, Christian Sullivan of Gunzilla Games, Republic Capital, Movement Labs’ Rushi Manche and 0G Labs’ co-founder, Michael Heinrich.
Yash Belavadi, co-founder of Surge, stated, “Bitcoin’s resilience and security make it the ideal, highest-quality settlement layer. Surge addresses Bitcoin’s shortfalls with its novel MetaLayer to create an enabling environment for developing value-driven Bitcoin applications and use cases.”
Bitcoin, while unparalleled in security and decentralization, has long faced limitations in scalability and advanced functionality. Previous attempts to address these issues, such as SegWit and Taproot, have made incremental improvements but fell short of unlocking Bitcoin’s full potential for complex applications and high transaction volumes. Surge’s MetaLayer solves this challenge by leveraging Bitcoin’s robust security model without requiring soft or hard forks, using advanced cryptographic techniques like Zero-Knowledge Proofs, zk-aggregation and decentralized verification, and interoperability through the use of Inter-Blockchain Communication.
This approach allows Surge to offer Bitcoin’s security along with the scalability needed for modern decentralized applications, general-purpose or app-specific rollups catering to the surging demand for scalable solutions as evidenced by the rapid adoption of Ordinals and Runes.
In a significant move, Surge is collaborating with Movement Labs to bring BTC liquidity to Move-based DeFi, enabling developers to seamlessly interoperate between the Bitcoin and Move ecosystems with its MetaLayer. This partnership will expand the aggregated network of unified liquidity and shared users, marking a major advancement in BTCFi adoption.
“There has been a surge in developer activity in the Bitcoin ecosystem, with builders trying to unlock dormant BTC and create innovative use cases,” Belavadi added. “Our goal is to provide viable scaling infrastructure so teams can focus on specific use-cases like DeFi, micropayments, gaming, or non-financial applications. Our collaboration with Movement Labs is a testament to this commitment.”
The company plans to launch its testnet soon, allowing developers to build on the platform, marking a major advancement in Bitcoin scalability and application development. For more information, read Surge’s docs.
About Surge
Surge, a Composable Metalayer on Bitcoin built to provide a secure network for launching Rollups, and dApps to scale Bitcoin innovation. The Surge team brings over four years of experience building in the Web3 space with a track record of delivering infrastructure across ecosystems like Ethereum, Cosmos, and Solana. Having previously worked behind the scenes on successful projects, including several listed on Binance, they emerged as a prominent force after gaining validation at ETH Denver 2024. Since then, the team has collaborated with various Bitcoin ecosystem teams to address key scalability challenges, positioning Surge as a pivotal player in driving the future of Bitcoin scaling solutions.
Surge’s network litepaper is available for private access, and they plan to launch the testnet soon so developers can build on top of it.
